Conversations on Death: Remembrance Symposium

Dominie Cappadonna of Conversations on Death says that our culture often makes it hard for us to talk about death and therefore to remember those who have died “in general our minds tend to have a spectrum of remembering and forgetting…and in Freud’s early views of mourning, he suggested that when we have a death, when a beloved has passed, then we were to cut off, forget and get over it. We see remenants of that belief system in our western technological society.” Cappadonna points to rhetoric after 9/11 that encouraged people to forget, to move on, to go shopping…”that in the collective has added to a certain denial of dying in the West.”

Cappadonna says that the “silver tsunami of baby boomers” is more aware of the issues of death and dying and boomers are embracing different ways to remember those who have died in a non-secular way. “There is a new cultural way of experiencing a wholesome mourning, and that is to return to remembering.”

There will be a symposium happening in Boulder on Friday December 11th, to encourage people to remember loved ones who have died, in a non religious, secular way. It will feature workshops on using poetry and music to remember those who have died. The threshold singers who perform at people’s bedside to bring ease and comfort to those at the thresholds of living and dying.